Christian Philosopher and Apologist

40 Years of Classroom Stories

While hanging out with some students from Denver Seminary, I recounted some of the funniest and oddest experiences in my many years of teaching. I told them I would write an essay on this.

Good teachers want students to learn well. We earnestly endeavor to prepare well and create an atmosphere where knowledge happens. But things go wrong or surprise us.

In about 1995, I was role playing as a Hindu philosopher in my apologetics class. I was making a case for non-dualism (or pantheistic monism) and the students were trying to refute me. It was quite philosophical. I had yet conceded nothing when a student asked, “Would you like to accept Jesus as your Savior?” I was incapacitated by hilarity, as was the class.

A few years ago, a student made a remark about me liking Kenny G (knowing my true feelings). I walked out of the class and then came in the back door. The student had panicked and was looking for me outside. The class was hysterical.

Many years ago, I suffered through being in class with a student who was both clueless and talkative. He or she waved her hand eagerly to make another long and inane comment. She then called out to me. I said, “I was trying to ignore you.” She then made her inane comment, nonetheless.

A student asked me a question that was obviously covered in the reading for that day. I asked, “Did you do the reading?” The student answered, “No.” I said, “Then I don’t have to answer your question.”

Before I banned laptops from the classroom about ten years ago, I passed out a piece of paper saying that students would not go on line while they used their computers to take notes. I asked them to sign this and turn it in to me. At this a student stood up and yelled, “You are treating us like high school students.” I replied, “You and I and the Dean will talk about this later.” Not being deterred the student said, “We don’t have to take this: Revolt!” I looked out at the horrified class and said, “If any of you want to revolt with this student, you can leave the class and we will all talk to the Dean later.” The student later apologized and the tension dissipated.

During a doctrinal oral examination, another professor and I probed a student about the present existence and location of Jesus after this resurrection. The student was flummoxed and did not have the categories to respond. He looked more panicked and frozen than a deer in headlights. My colleague said, “I feel like we are doing dental work here, trying to pull the answers out of you.” The student later retook part of the examination and passed. He now knows where Jesus is (besides in his heart).

I made many comments on a student’s thesis in philosophy. He responded to all of them, but neglected one. I gave back his thesis and told him to attend to what he omitted. I also said that as a penalty, he had to take me to a baseball game. He did.

At the break during a class, a student came up to me and said that my button-up shirt was buttoned unevenly. I corrected that in the men’s room.

In apologetics, I pretended to be a jazz saxophone player named Zoot. Zoot asked that the class give him an argument for the existence of God from the existence of a saxophone. They did, and Zoot was impressed.

I was teaching a very large and long class on apologetics on a week night. To keep people interested, I brought a Frisbee to class. When I wanted someone to answer a question, I threw it into the class. Whoever caught it had to answer the question.

One student turned in a paper in which he misspelled both my first and last name: Douglass Groothius.

I was reading a student paper on the philosophy of technology and thought, “This is quite good. This is me!” The hapless student copied two full pages from my book, The Soul in Cyberspace.

When teaching at Metro State College, I received the worst paper I had ever seen. It was terribly written, except where it plagiarized from an atheist web page. The student also wrote, “Because I am a Christian, I am a relativist.” I call this paper F cubed. F for writing. F for plagiarizing. F for logic.

In a history of philosophy class, I assigned a paper on Kant. One of the students turned in a paper on Descartes instead. Oops.

I saw a student looking down at the floor next to her desk and moving a piece of paper on the floor. “Marina, what are you doing?” She said, “There is a spider on the floor and I want to save him.” She then put the spider piece of paper and put him out in the hallway. I’m not sure how long he survived there, though.

Author: Douglas Groothuis

Author of Christian Apologetics, Truth Decay, On Jesus, On Pascal, and others. Professor of Philosophy, Denver Seminary since 1993. Head of The Apologetics and Ethics Masters Degree Program and Co-Director of The Gordon Lewis Center for Christian Thought and Culture. Senior Fellow for Apologetics.com.
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2 thoughts

Back in my Bible College days (in the mid 80’s), I recall an assignment in which the Professor wanted us to write and orally present our personal testimonies of how we came to know the Lord. For something as innocent (and subjective) as it was, he was absolutely brutal in his assessments.

After the first few presentations, nobody wanted to volunteer to do theirs. When it became my turn, I was very nervous and as I took the podium, the Professor got called out of the classroom for a minute. Not to let an opportunity go by, I quickly asked the class to go along with me and to ask questions about the Apostle Paul’s conversion experience.

As he started back into the classroom, I loudly stated, “And that is how I came to know the Lord. Any questions?”

Two or three hands went up and I called on them.

“So, you said a bright light knock you down?”, asked one student.

I answered, “Yes, it was quite a powerful light that I can only describe as a force that physically pushed me.”

Another student asked, “And you say that you were blinded?”

“Yes I was. I couldn’t see a thing!”, I answered.

The line of questioning went on for a few minutes as the Professor stood in the door way. As we all tried our hardest to keep from laughing, he didn’t miss a beat and started the same dissection of Paul’s testimony as he did with all the others! My takeaway from that experience was that even Paul’s testimony wasn’t good enough for him!

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About Douglas Groothuis

Dr. Douglas Groothuis is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, Evangelical Philosophical Society, and Society of Christian Philosophers. Author of numerous books including Christian Apologetics. Douglas Groothuis is the Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary. Learn more here.

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